


I Knew You Before

by vamm_goda



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Edmonton Oilers, Friends to Lovers, Long-Distance Relationship, M/M, New York Islanders, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-21
Updated: 2013-08-21
Packaged: 2017-12-24 04:34:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/935420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vamm_goda/pseuds/vamm_goda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fill for the offseason match prompt: Sam Gagner/John Tavares – theirs is a long-distance relationship balanced on furtive post-game meet-ups</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Knew You Before

**Author's Note:**

> For my dear friend silver spotted.

_We can’t keep it up like this_.

That’s always the first thought that hits Sam, the moment he opens his door and John is there, hair still wet from the showers and showing a soft wave. It doesn’t matter if _there_ is outside his apartment in Edmonton, or his hotel room in New York. He opens the door and John is there, and the thought dances across his brain like an accusation.

It falls away like frost on the side of a beer, a shower of bubbles, the second John steps into his space, lowering every inhibition Sam has as he smiles and murmurs “Hi?” like he’s suddenly shy around him. Like he’s _intruding_ , when Sam would give him anything, in any place, if he just thought to ask him.

“Hey. Come in,” he offers like an afterthought, even though John is already inside, already stripping off his jacket and tossing it in the general direction of the coat tree Sam was guilted into buying from Pottery Barn on the understanding that’s what adults did with their coats. The coat lands in a puddle on top of his boots, in a literal puddle because there’s snow melting off of the boots and onto the floor.

Sam is completely unaware of the mess, and John’s forgiven him for it a thousand times already, so Sam just makes a note to toss the coat into the dryer before John’s in his space, kissing like desperation, until the coat is completely irrelevant to everything.

\\\

There’s no real beginning to any of it. They’ve known each other for so long that any sort of beginning is impossible to pinpoint. It’s as foggy in both of their memories as birth or their first steps; as soon as Sam can begin to trust his memories John was in them. He has a year advantage on John, so if he can’t remember for sure then there’s no way John does.

They skated together on the rink in Sam’s back yard. Sometimes John won, but most the time Sam did. Sometimes they fought (a lot of times) but it always settled into the back of their minds like it didn’t matter at all, because it didn’t.

That rink in Sam’s backyard, the one his dad had made because he loved watching Sam and his sister play hockey, that was their place. At first it was their place to skate, and when they got older it became _their place_ , there in the back yard with the big fence and the comforting glow of Sam’s house just a few yards away.

\\\

There’s a lot of give and take with this, trying to make sure that they’re moving forwards together, and not away. So sometimes Sam goes to see John, and sometimes John comes to him, and it works as a give and take. It’s not ideal, but it’s what they have, and so they work with it. This time it’s Sam knocking, waiting for John to answer. And he does, opening the door with a little grin, hauling Sam in bodily before he’s even got the door open.

There’s not _time_ , there’s never time like this, and sometimes he wonders how crazy both of them are to keep it going like this.

When John’s got him pressed against the wall, breath hot on the back of his neck, he knows exactly how crazy that makes him.

John presses a series of kisses and bites to the back of his neck, some of them sharp enough to mark, and he whines, high and desperate, before slouching back against John, weak and shuddery.

“What would you do if it wasn’t me?” Sam asks, bending to tie his shoes after. It makes his body ache in pleasant ways.

“Who else would it be?” John isn’t bothering to dress, and he’d be lying if he said that bothered him.

Sam doesn’t have an answer for that. Because this thing . . . he thinks it’s love, he’s pretty sure it can’t count as infatuation anymore, even though they’ve never sat down and actually like, come up with some sort of agreement for it.

There’s nothing vocalized between them, but if there is someone else it could have been he doesn’t know who, and jealously doesn’t want to.

John’s face lights up. “Eberle.”

 _What_? “What?”

“It could have been Eberle.” John grins. “I’ve seen how he looks at me.”

He smothers John with his lips, drawing him in and shutting him up. “Don’t you even joke about that.” He laughs, covering the edge of _don’t you dare_ that’s anything but a joke.

John arches against him, and it’s too soon for anything like that just yet, but it’s a pleasant buzz along his nerves anyway. “Jealous?”

Sam has no idea if there’s anyone else when it’s not him, but damn if there’ll be anyone when it is him. “Somehow I don’t think you’ve got _that_ much game.”

“I got you.”

“I have limited experience.”

\\\

It’s not like his experiences are really limited, it’s just that they all involve John in one way or another.

Not that he’d admit it, because he feels incredibly ridiculous when he even thinks it, but the fact is he just . . . found John early, and never felt the need to shop around once that decision was reached. There’s nothing wrong with that, he’s not ashamed of it, but there are moments he wonders if it’s all too easy.

It had started after a friendly game, when Sam had been changing for dinner, wiping his face off on his shirt, and John made a studied effort not to look at him. It’s nothing he’d really thought about either of them; in all honesty he’d never really thought about it one way or another.

A couple weeks later John made the move, because John was always the one who actually had a clue. His hand had come up to cup the juncture of neck and shoulder, where Sam has discovered he loves being touched, and pulled him up into a kiss like it was the easiest thing in the world.

Considering it’s the two of them, it kinda was. It’s always been so easy between them, except for now, when it isn’t.

\\\

They never anticipated that it would ever be less than easy. When you’re kids, everything is easy. They both set their sights on the NHL, and Sam with his skill set and John with his . . . his _John-ness_ , there was no way they could fail. They played, and trained, and when they weren’t on the ice they were together. They were always together, and that’s what makes this so hard.

Sam wouldn’t give up the NHL for the world, and neither would John. This is beyond their lives, hockey’s the only real thing in the universe sometimes, and they can’t stop. Not for anything, not even for each other. There was a time when maybe Sam thought about it, when he moved to Edmonton and John wasn’t there, and he thought . . . maybe, if John didn’t enter the draft, if strings were pulled Edmonton could —

It makes no sense, it would never work, and Sam’s not that _selfish_ , but on nights when he’s home alone and everything feels impossibly huge and empty, sometimes he wishes he was.

\\\

It was a bad loss, barely worth the term ‘effort’, and by unspoken consensus the Oilers need to be out of town as quickly as possible.

But John’s in the same town, the same building, and Sam can’t let that go. He can’t imagine slinking away and not seeing John because, terrible loss or not, it’s a chance, and they have too few of those. It’s been _months_ and he hurts.

“Sam, we gotta —”

“I’ll meet you at the bus.” He’s tossing his suit coat on while he walks, which seems pointless when he’s hoping it’ll be off soon enough.

Hallsy cocks his head, blinks a few times. “But we’re heading out in, like, a second.”

“And I’ll meet you. Just.” Sam shoots an anxious look at Shawn, somewhere between a starving puppy and a drowning sailor. All kinds of sad and desperate things. “Please? Just, like. Twenty minutes.”

Shawn’s exasperated. “Fifteen.”

Shawn’s a great captain. Scratch that, a _glorious_ captain. “Deal.”

“John’s driving you if you’re late.”

There’s so secret he’d be going to see John. There’s nothing about the comment that shows that Shawn knows anything except that he’s visiting his best friend, but his heart rate skips up anyway. Shawn’s watching him.

“What the hell is that on your arm?” Jonesy chirps, apropos of nothing.

Attention instantly shifts to Ryan denying that he got a new tattoo. It’s a bruise, but watching him explain it is hilarious to watch. Sam almost regrets running off.

Jonesy winks at him as he shuffles out.

He loves his team.

\\\

“You don’t really have a lot of respect for my stamina, don’t you?”

Most the time Sam can’t believe that anyone would mistake John for some sort of Hockey Robot 2.1. Then he uses a word like ‘stamina’ in conversation and he totally can.

“I didn’t say anything about your _stamina_.” His lips are sliding across John’s cheek, a rough burn against his chin that’s going to leave a mark. “I just said we have 15 minutes. Call it a challenge.” He keeps pleading with his mouth.

“Challenge, eh?” It’s not really clear if it’s _Sam_ or _challenge_ that gets John to light up like that.

Sam grins up at him, fingers threading in his hair. “Exactly. Like a tie up goal in the last minute.”

John finally relents, pushing him back against the trainer’s door and pressing one hand to the wood next to his head. His breath is hot against Sam’s ear, and he trembles just a little. “We didn’t need that tonight.”

Oh, fuck him. “Fuck you.”

“Mmmm.” John’s purr sends a ripple down his spine to settle somewhere below the belt, hot and trembling. “We should try that sometime.”

He almost hates the incoherence that settles over him when John’s sucking at that place on his neck, because it seems like he just said something important. All he can do is growl appreciatively, fingers scratching at John’s hair. He doesn’t hate what it takes to get him to incoherence.

John’s already starting to grind against his thigh, long and slow thrusts that drag his hardening dick across Sam’s thigh. He squirms, works his leg between John’s to give him something to move against, pressing back against him.

“I wish we could have done this at home,” John mutters, trying to shove Sam’s jacket off. “On, or off?”

Dressing takes time out of _this_. “On, fuck, I don’t care.”

Sam can feel the smile against his neck when John starts working on his belt, tugging at it off handed. He’s still rubbing against Sam, slow and easy like they have the rest of their lives to get this done, palm pressing against the bulge in his pants, rubbing at the body warmed zipper. Sam does not want to look at his watch, but the clock on the wall tells him that some minutes have passed, minutes they can’t get back, and he jerks into John.

“Fine, fine,” John laughs, nipping at his shoulder and working the slacks open.

It’s air, and then John’s hand, and he whines a few times, burying his face against John’s shoulder. His thigh is shuddering as John ruts against it, hand curling around Sam’s cock in a dry drag.

“Jesus, let me . . .” Sam’s hands are shaking, and he has to bat John away long enough to hook his fingers in the edge of John’s wind pants, tugging them down in a quick motion. It’s probably the hardest thing he’s ever had to do.

He loves elastic waistbands like so, so much right now. Whoever invented zippers was a dick. He finally gets his pants most of the way off, shoves them away so they can tangle together, knees bumping as they try to settle together against the wall.

Thankfully the door is solid core, because the force of them slamming into it makes it rattle in the frame. He can’t imagine that an ass shaped hole would go unremarked upon. John’s shoving him against the door with a vengeance, like he’s _mad_ about something, lips pressed to his neck as they rub together.

John’s shirt is rucked up, and a mixture of sweat and precome is easing the way between them, making it a slick glide as they build their rhythm up. John’s hands knot in Sam’s hair, clamping his ears to his head as he kisses like a wildfire, hot and building uncontrollably between them. It’s easy for John to slip out of the pool of his clothes, wrap a leg around Sam’s and up the leverage between them enough that Sam’s panting and seeing stars and struggling against the pants that are knotted around his ankles so that he can’t _move_.

The air between them is becoming obscene, sweat and sex and soft curses. They’re not trying for anything like stamina, and John keeps making these _sounds_ that make Sam get hot and flustered and he doesn’t give much of a warning before he comes, just gasping out “John, fuck, I, fuck,” before spending in the space between them, mingling up with sweat.

He nips at John’s throat because it’s there, working at the skin to get away from the smell of soap and the rink and down to the smell that John has in the summer when they’re on a dock somewhere, sprawled all over each other and laughing. Where they have all the time in the world for each other.

There’s an edge of teeth, and he can feel John growl against his lips as he comes, slumping against Sam and letting him support his body as he shudders and surrenders to it. It feels like it lasts forever, that moment between them.

It’s too brief, however long they have.

It’s worth it, though.

\\\

“If we make it to the NHL . . .”

Sam looks at John, snorting. “ _If_?”

“ _When_.” He’s grinning. “When we do, we’re still gonna be together, right?”

Fucked if Sam knows, but he’s older so it’s his job to pretend.

“Yeah,” he promises, kissing at John’s hairline where sweat is starting to gather. “Try and get rid of me.”


End file.
